John Toye

Career He started his career as a civil servant with the UK Treasury between 1965 and 1968 before going on to being a development specialist with the University of Cambridge at Wolfson College between 1972 and 1980, and then at the University of Swansea between 1982 and 1987, where he was the director at the Centre for Development Studies.

Toye's work focused on development economics, studying the economies of developing economies. He did this by studying the impact of multinational agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on developing economies. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he focused his studies on agencies like World Bank and their role in pushing for free-market economics principles on developing economies. This was the basis of his book Aid and Power (1991) which he co-wrote with economists Jane Harrigan and Paul Mosley. Earlier, in the 1980s, he wrote Dilemmas of Development (1987) in which he countered the prevailing thinking of free-market economists. In a critique against free-market advocates of the time, he wrote that they "first turn liberty against equality and fraternity, then overthrow liberty itself".

Toye is credited with shaping development studies as a discipline, serving as the president of the Development Studies Association, driving research on the topic, and being a member of the editorial boards of European Journal of Development Studies, Journal of Development Studies, Journal of International Development, Oxford Development Studies, and ''World Development. In addition to his research, his colleagues recounted his knowledge of wine lists, sense of humour, and his 'dram of whisky'.

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